Prayer in Public Schools? It's Nothing New for Many

By PETER APPLEBOME,

Published: November 22, 1994

ATLANTA, Nov. 21—
As President Clinton and the new Republican leadership in Congress consider measures that would return organized prayer to public schools, it is worth remembering one thing.

Prayer is already there.

Despite a Supreme Court ruling 32 years ago that classroom prayer and Scripture reading are unconstitutional even if they are voluntary, prayer is increasingly a part of school activities from early-morning moments of silence to lunchtime prayer sessions to pre-football-game prayers for both players and fans.

The most common forms are state-mandated moments of silence at the beginning of the day, which are permissible to the extent they are not meant to be a forum for organized prayer. But, particularly in the South, religious clubs, prayer groups and pro-prayer students and community groups are making religion and prayer part of the school day.

At Louisa County High School in Louisa, Va., for instance, lunchtime prayer meetings on the steps outside the school's band room were organized last year by Tenille M. Wermteer, who is now a senior.

"We read a chapter of the Bible and prayed for 15 minutes every Monday and Wednesday," she said. "We got some weird looks, but a lot of people came up and asked what we were doing. I told them, 'Jesus Christ loves you so much, it would be mean for you to turn him down without giving him a chance.' "

At Greenville High School in Greenville, S.C., the head football coach, Larry Frost, asks an assistant to say a prayer and lead the team in reciting the Lord's Prayer before every game.

In Iowa, 50 to 100 of the state's 358 high schools had prayers at graduation ceremonies last year.

The director of the Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union said the group was planning to sue a school district in northern Mississippi, asserting that the school allows prayers over the school intercom and pays Bible study teachers to teach in elementary and middle schools.

The American Center for Law and Justice, founded by Pat Robertson, estimates that 12,000 Bible clubs are operating in American public schools. People for the American Way, a civil liberties group, says 60 to 70 percent of Americans respond favorably to the idea of prayer in school.

Student Venture, a part of the Campus Crusade for Christ International, is helping high school and junior high students organize prayer groups that have 177,000 participants. "Student prayer is not rare at all," said Nancy M. Wilson of Student Venture. "Students are praying whether they're officially allowed to or not."

One of Student Venture's suggested activities is "prayer triplets." In a handbook called "Mobilizing Students to Pray," it describes the program as follows: "Prayer triplets are groups of three students praying together, three times a week for three non-Christian friends each, for three groups on campus and for one another."

Much of the activity is private and voluntary and within constitutional guidelines. Some of it probably goes beyond what is legally permissible, because a large segment of the public is more inclined than the courts to have prayer in the schools. Particularly in the South, there is enough support for school prayer that communities are sometimes content to let it continue.

"You know how it is in Louisiana," said Keith Johnson, a member of the Louisiana Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. "We do things and just don't discuss it. In other states people argue, but in Louisiana they just go ahead and do things until they get sued."

To proponents, the school prayer that exists, and the potential for widening such observances, is a much-needed counterbalance to the violence and lack of values that they see in society.

"I think it's about time our children be given an opportunity to communicate with God," said David Caton, state director of the American Family Association of Florida, whose group supported a nonsectarian, voluntary prayer measure offered during the past session of the Florida Legislature.

But critics say the push for organized school prayer is eroding the separation of church and state established by courts interpreting the First Amendment's Establishment Clause. That clause was put in the Constitution to prevent the religious persecution in Europe that many American colonists came here to escape. And many school officials say prayer has increasingly become an issue dividing school boards and communities.

"We get more questions on religion and sexual harassment than anything else at this point," said Gwendolyn Gregory, deputy general counsel for the National School Boards Association in Alexandria, Va. "There is a lot of activity out there by somebody. You get it in big districts and little districts, South and North. It's all over."

Still, it is in the South where prayer is the hottest issue and where the line between permissible and impermissible behavior is most likely to be blurred.

There is Mississippi, where the dismissal of a school principal, Bishop Knox, who had allowed students to read prayers over the intercom, led thousands of students in 15 Mississippi counties to walk out of class in his support last year. The state has since passed a law permitting "nonsectarian, nonproselytizing, student-initiated, voluntary prayer" at school events. The law was struck down by a Federal judge and is being appealed by the state.